Leadership

Julian M. Goldman, MD

Director and Founder, MD PnP Program
Julian M. Goldman, MD is Medical Director of Biomedical Engineering for Partners HealthCare System, an anesthesiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and Director of the Program on Medical Device Interoperability based at the Massachusetts General Hospital Dept. of Anesthesia Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Partners HealthCare System, and CIMIT.

Dr. Goldman founded the Medical Device "Plug-and-Play" (MD PnP) Interoperability research program in 2004 to promote innovation in patient safety and clinical care by leading the adoption of patient-centric integrated clinical environments.

Dr. Goldman completed anesthesiology residency and fellowship training at the University of Colorado. His research fellowship was in biomedical informatics, focusing on simulation and applications for monitoring and real-time decision support. He departed Colorado in 1998 as a tenured associate professor to work as an executive of a medical device company. Dr. Goldman joined Harvard Medical School and the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 2002, where he served as a principle anesthesiologist in the MGH "Operating Room of the Future." He is board-certified in anesthesiology and clinical informatics.

Dr. Goldman co-chaired the FCC mHealth Task Force, the HIT Policy Committee FDASIA Workgroup regulatory subgroup, and the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee work group on healthcare. He served on the NSF CISE Advisory Committee, as a Visiting Scholar in the FDA Medical Device Fellowship Program, and as a member of the CDC BSC for the NCPHI. He currently serves in leadership positions in several medical device standardization organizations including Chair of ISO Technical Committee 121, Chair of the Use Case Working Group of the Continua Health Alliance, and Co-Chair of the AAMI Interoperability Working Group. Dr. Goldman is the recipient of the International Council on Systems Engineering 2010 Pioneer Award, American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) 2009 award for Professional Achievement in Technology, the 2009 AAMI Foundation/Institute for Technology in Health Care Clinical Application Award, and the University of Colorado Chancellor's "Bridge to the Future" award.

David Arney is the Lead Engineer for the Medical Device Plug and Play Program. He has been working on applying formal methods to medical device software since 2001 and was a scholar in residence at the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health in the Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories. He was involved in writing the ASTM 2761-09 ICE standard for interoperable medical devices. He started at the MD PnP program in September of 2010, and is currently writing his dissertation for a PhD in computer science under Professor Insup Lee at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Sandy Weininger is currently a senior engineer at the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). He is keenly interested in the performance of sensors and actuators in assuring the safety of interoperable systems and electrical safety.Dr. Weininger studied electrode-tissue interface properties to receive his BSEE and MS/BME degrees from Drexel University. A PhD in Bioengineering was awarded from the University of Pennsylvania for work in signal processing and control systems.He is a member of the AAMI Interoperability Working Group, AAMI-UL 2800 committee, chair of the ISO-IEC Pulse Oximeter Committee, and FDA’s liaison to IEC TC 62 and SC 62A, committees responsible for safety of electromedical equipment. He has been an advisor to the MD PnP Program since its inception in 2004.

Shoumen Palit Austin Datta, PhDSenior Scientist, MD PnP Program

Dr. Datta is interested in the medical internet of things (medical IoT). Convergence of data from medical devices and other sources may improve analytics and support point of care solutions. Prediction and prevention at home and the hospital are elements of his interest in medical IoT. He was a Fellow in Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and is a Senior Member of the MIT Auto ID Labs and Research Affiliate, Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the former Senior Vice President of the Industrial Internet Consortium (2013-2016) and Co-Founder and Executive/Research Director of the MIT Forum for Supply Chain Innovation (2001-2009) at the MIT School of Engineering. Complete bio here.

Team Members

Prior to joining the MD PnP Team Drayton spent 10 years at Massachusetts General Hospital supporting the Director of the Clinical and Biochemical Pharmacology Laboratory as well as the Anaesthetist-in-Chief for Shriners Hospitals for Children® – Boston.

Rick Schrenker provides systems engineering services to the MGH Department of Biomedical Engineering and the MD PnP Program. His interests are on the application of formal systems engineering in health care, focusing in on requirements, validation, assurance, and risk management. He has held clinical engineering and clinical engineering management positions at Johns Hopkins Hospital as well as MGH since entering the field in 1979. Rick holds a BS and MS in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University.Rick is active in AAMI and its information technology and medical software standards related efforts. He is a member of the IEEE and its Medical Technology and Policy Committee, as well as the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Biomedical Engineering Working Group.

David Guffrey, M.S. is the Partners HealthCare Biomedical Cybersecurity Specialist. He is responsible for medical device cybersecurity research and operations efforts across the Partners HealthCare Enterprise. He conducts his medical device cybersecurity research in the MD PnP Lab. David works with diverse stakeholders across Partners including Radiology, Biomed, NetEng, NetSec, InfoSec and other departments for medical device remediation and response to global cyberattacks. He collaborates closely with Information Systems Personnel on medical device infrastructure assessment and is a leading Healthcare Delivery Organization voice on the AAMI Device Security Workgroup developing the next generation of medical device security standards.

David came to the MD PnP Lab after 2.5 years as a Clinical Systems Engineer on the Partners eCare Biomedical Device Integration (PeC BMDI) Team. The PeC BMDI Team oversees the medical device data from generation at the bedside, through the networking and server systems, into the data center and medical records systems. David lead vendor/device integration projects as well as the cybersecurity and system monitoring responsibilities.

David holds Masters Degrees in Biomedical Engineering and in Business Management. He has 8+ years of research experience in the neural engineering space including: brain computer interfacing and neural prosthetic systems, neural stimulation and feedback systems, virtual reality systems, signal processing, networking and server architecture design and implementation.

Ken AuerbachDatabase Engineer, MD PnP Program

Ken Auerbach’s academic background is in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics. He has worked as a Computer Scientist at MIT as well as on military projects at MIT Lincoln Lab and Draper Laboratory. He has also held several positions in the Health Care field. He has worked on several health-related research projects, including a semi-Markov computer model to aid in the optimization of resource allocations for Tuberculosis and AIDS prevention and treatment - work that resulted in a paper he co-authored in JAMA. His last position was Project Manager and Database and System Administrator at the Lab for Drug Discovery in Neurodegeneration (LDDN) at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital.

Sue Whitehead Senior Program Advisor

Sue was our founding Program Manager and served in this critical role from 2004-2014. A graduate of Rice University, Ms. Whitehead has worked with computer applications in healthcare settings during most of her career, primarily for Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) in Cambridge, MA. At BBN, she managed a major project (CLINFO) that provided NIH-sponsored General Clinical Research Centers with a time-oriented clinical database designed for research, and coordinated other projects ranging from information commerce in a multi-practice clinic to evaluation of the NIH Division of Research Resources by an interdisciplinary panel of experts. She also managed a Technical Support group for BBN Software Systems, and led and trained TQM quality improvement teams at BBN and at PictureTel Inc. Prior to joining our program, Ms. Whitehead managed research operations for the Digital/Compaq/Hewlett Packard East Coast research lab. She moved from industry into the healthcare sector in order to pursue her interest in applying technology to healthcare information.

Collaborators

Mike RobkinPresident, Anakena Solutions, Inc., MD FIRE Project Leader, MD PnP Program, Former Board Member, Continua Health Alliance, Former Principal Enterprise Architect, Kaiser PermanenteMike Robkin is the MD FIRE project manager for the MD PnP Program. He internationalized the procurement contract language for hospitals and providers to purchase interoperable medical devices and systems that are necessary for safe and effective patient care. Mr. Robkin has been developing mission-critical computer applications for more than 20 years as a programmer, systems architect, and executive. At Hughes, GM-Europe and Kaiser Permanente, he programmed one of the first photo-realistic real-time computer generated imagery systems, defined protocol standards for the first massively multi-participant real-time simulation, and developed the world's largest medical imaging enterprise architecture. Mr. Robkin was a founding member of the Board of Directors and Treasurer of the Continua Health Alliance.

Past Team Members

Diego AlonsoApplications Developer, MD PnP ProgramDiego Alonso was an Applications Developer for the MD PnP program. His previous experience includes working as an Analyst/Programmer for the financial and media industries. He has a master`s degree in Computer Science from the Complutense University of Madrid. Diego began working with the MD PnP program in 2013.

Jeffrey Peterson

Clinical Engineer, MD PnP ProgramJeffrey Peterson worked as a Clinical Engineer for the MD PnP program. Previously, he worked as a Clinical Engineer at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, MA. His projects were focused on healthcare technology management, clinical alarm management and distribution and medical device integration. He holds an MS Biomedical and Clinical Engineering and a BS in Biomedical Engineering, both from the University of Connecticut. Jeff completed his Master’s thesis on clinical alarm management during his time at UMass.

Harshal SawantBiomedical Engineer, MD PnP ProgramHarshal was a Biomedical Engineer at the MD PnP program. Previously she has worked in a start-up based on commercializing sustainable materials. Her work experiences involve Research & Development, Product Design, Project Management and Business Development. She holds a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from NITK Surathkal, India and an M.Eng in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University. Harshal began working with the MD PnP program in May 2014.

Katharine Koury

Clinical Research Coordinator for the MD PnP Program

Katharine holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Andrea Lenco

Research & Grants Assistant, MD PnP Program

Andrea was our Research & Grants Assistant. She is a graduate from the Boston University School of Public Health MPH Program where she studied Maternal and Child Health. Previously, she worked as a Course Manager at Harvard Medical School.

Emma SconyersResearch & Grants Assistant, MD PnP ProgramEmma Sconyers followed Andrea as the Research and Grants Assistant for the MD PnP Program.

Jeff Plourde

Lead Software Developer, MD PnP ProgramPreviously he worked in the hedge fund industry. He holds a BS in Computer Science and a BS in Biology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 2012-2014

Mike FeinbergSoftware developer, MD PnP ProgramMike is a software architect with strong experience in production of diverse distributed applications, real time embedded system, GUI applications, expert system administration, OOP, large-scale system design and development, porting and integration. He has a BS in computer science and ScrumMaster training.